This blog will be used to explore, exchange, and create ideas around 21st century collaborative learning and the environments and tools that make this learning possible--with the big goal of helping teachers and those who prepare teachers redesign teaching and learning for success in the 21st century.

July 27, 2006

House Overwhelmingly Passes DOPA

Last night the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Deleting
Online Predators Act, 410 to 15. It would seem that educators had little to
no impact on the outcome. Perhaps this is by lack of numbers, or because the
MySpace panic that's overtaken this country is so overwhelming that no
amount of rational pleas from educators would have stopped it.

If you haven't been following DOPA just click here and catch up---I had been following David Warlick's take pretty closely and comments from Jim O'Hagan caught my eye. It begins...

I posted this the other night and feel there some misleading
tendacies in your post about the bill. It isn’t that big of a bill to
read, and I will preface this with saying that I am actually against
the bill, but want to have a realistic view of this bill if it becomes
law.

Let’s look at the bill objectively...

... Have you read the bill yet?
Have you broken it down without relying on the opinion of another
blogger? Blogging isn't banned. Learning Blogmeister will not go away.
The commercial sites will be filtered in schools. Commercial chat
services will be filtered. The list of sites will be provided to
schools and libraries.

The part that struck a chord with me though was the statement "...Without relying on the opinion of another
blogger." I read something lately on Robert Berkman's blog Intelligent Agent in his post Verify, Verify, Verify he blogs about Jay Rosen's session at BloggerConIV. In his discussion of the current role of citizen journalism in “Users Know More Than We Do Journalism: My Session at BloggerCon IV, June 24”, NYU Professor Jay Rosen discussed
the challenge he has had when discussing using citizen journalists to
do original research and gather and report information.

He shares the following which I found valuable.

And so it does seem that knowing how to verifiy is now becoming
important not just for reporters, but for all of us when we get our
information from blogs, citizen journalists, or consumer generated
media (CGM).

Trust is nice when you have it in a particular
source: we all do come to know those handful of writers or bloggers who
have the most insightful, significant, and valuable things to say, and
come to generally trust them… But verification of an unknown source is
another matter. We'’re all our own editors now and need to know what it
means to verify for accuracy.

So simple but so true... as responsible educational bloggers it is important that we not only check for accuracy but teach our students to do so as well. We all know it. It is common sense. But we need to be reminded. His post goes on...

Starting with the fundamentals, I
think that these are the three fundamental rules reporters'’ follow
when trying to verify some claim or statement:

1. Going to any original source
and checking yourself. You need to go to the primary material, original
report, broadcast, document, etc and view it. Admittedly, the concept
of "“original"” changes on the Internet: —for example, is a digital
copy of a document an original? Not technically, but assuming that the
document itself is authentic (another discussion altogether) then it is
much preferred that you read this than relying on someone'’s own
discussion, summary or interpretation of it.

2. Get a confirming source--
or two--if possible. Remember that our best estimate of truth generally
occurs via probability: when it becomes increasingly likely that what
you found out is accurate. The more sources or people that say the same
thing, the higher the probability is that it is accurate.

3. Understanding the motivations
and background of the person making the statement or claim. Although
the culture of blogs is transparency and honesty, in some ways, this
can make a blogger with a hidden agenda even harder to detect, since we
may assume that the blogger is stating his or her views openly.

Now I am not saying that what many of us have been saying about DOPA isn't true. If nothing else, this legislation, while well meaning, opens a can of worms in ways it could be interpreted in court. What I am saying is that I am guilty of jumping on the bandwagon without having read the entire bill myself. Jim's statements to David were a timely reminder to me that I need to make sure I always do just that. We all do-- if we are going to bring the credibility to the power of this medium it deserves we need to check originial sources. I know most of you who are posting about DOPA did-- I am just admitting --I didnt. Thanks Jim, for the reminder.